Last week, I had the pleasure of organizing the inaugural tweetup for ENET, the IEEE Boston Entrepreneurs’ Network, hosted here in Cambridge at the Swiss Consulate. ENET has been helping tech startups in the Boston area for over 20 years with education, 
networking, and innovative programs. As the startup ecosystem has shifted over the past few years from the 128 belt to Cambridge, ENET has moved with it, maintaining a strong base in the suburbs with meetings in Waltham, but adding programming in the city, where so many of the hottest startups are based. We’ve added tweetups to our more formal panel discussions, and swissnex Boston was gracious enough to provide the venue for our first one.
An energized crowd gathered on a cold January evening last week to kick off the tweetup season to hear Suzanne McDonald, founder of Designated Editor, on everybody’s favorite topic: how to acquire your vital first customers. Suzanne presented on practical, doable ways for startups to market their products, touching comprehensively on content marketing, SEO, social media, and product strategy. Audience members came prepared with their questions, which Suzanne answered with her characteristic humor and insight. Networking before and after the talk brought together senior professionals from so many worlds, including software, hardware, arts, nonprofits, and media. Students and recent grads on their first startup swapped stories with people on their third exits. It was an exhilarating evening of learning and connections.
Building Museums’ Digital Marketing Infrastructure: Lessons from NEMA 2011
Earlier this month, I spoke at the 93rd annual New England Museum Association conference on building a year-round digital marketing infrastructure. Museum marketing presents unique challenges for digital marketers, for a variety of reasons: 
- Traditionally, museum marketing is very seasonal and event-driven. Marketing kicks into high gear in the buildup to an exhibition, then goes quiet again after the opening. This runs counter to basic tenets of social and email engagement, which mandate regular, continuous conversation.
- Budget constraints mean that many of the standard tools in a digital marketer’s toolbox, from marketing automation to monitoring tools, are out of reach.
- The highly visual nature of museum marketing places top-of-the-line print creative at a premium, further straining digital budgets.
Fortunately, there are ways to meet these challenges with creativity. My workshop focused on finding practical, effective ways to shift marketing efforts towards year-round digital. The reasons for doing this are multiple: greater awareness among increasingly digital museum-goers, enhancing the impact of traditional seasonal print campaigns, and reaching the vital B2B segment of tour operators, whose contribution to most museums’ bottom line is significant.
So how do you do it? How does a small museum staff, or an agency working within a museum’s limited budget, build out a digital marketing infrastructure that makes sense for museums’ unique needs? A staged approach is often the best one:
- Focus on the digital channels that will best reach your target demographic, and put the bulk of your efforts into creative campaigns on those channels. It may be desirable to be on Facebook and Twitter, blog, have a YouTube channel, run banner ads, and have a great email program. Realistically, doing 2-3 of those things really well will have the most payoff.
- Measure everything aggressively. Where many museums lag is in having measurement programs, from web analytics to social listening, in place. Put more effort into measuring what works, because every dollar and person-hour counts. And, in a grant-driven field, being prepared to show solid success metrics can be a competitive advantage in securing grant funding for advertising and marketing initiatives.
- Tap into your inherent credibility and value as experts in your field to create a strong content marketing program. Inbound marketing was made for museums. Curators, executive staff, and volunteers are often an amazing font of knowledge in your specialized subject. Use this knowledge for PR, blogging, and video content—year-round.
The benefits of augmenting traditional print and direct mail with year-round digital marketing are considerable. By increasing the stability of attendance numbers, non-seasonal programs build stable cash flow and increase the health of organizations.
